(Credits: Tri-Star Pictures)

Nobody owned the 1980s quite like Arnold Schwarzenegger did. The man had (still has) it all: muscles, one-liners, and larger-than-life roles, which made him a box office king. And now one of his most underrated films, The Running Man, has found a brand-new audience on Netflix UK, as it’s climbed to number ten in the most popular charts.

The Running Man was released in the year 1987. For those who didn’t know, the movie dropped right in the middle of Schwarzenegger’s golden era. By then, he was already the Terminator and cemented himself as the face of action cinema. But The Running Man offered something different. It was not just gunfire and explosions but a satirical jab at media, politics, and the dark side of entertainment.

The story takes you to the year 2017, as imagined back then. It is set in a dystopian future where convicted criminals are forced to compete in a deadly game show. But here, survival means killing, and losing means certain death. Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richards, a man wrongfully accused and thrown into the televised bloodsport.

The setup sure is outrageous, but it is also strangely ahead of its time. It imagined a world where reality TV pushes morality to the edge and audiences cheer on violence as if it’s a sport. If you think about it in many ways, it reminds you of Squid Game, only it was released decades before.

Of course, this is still a Schwarzenegger movie, which means the satire comes packed with brutal fights, over-the-top villains, and those signature one-liners that fans still quote decades later. The film doesn’t just deliver spectacle; it turns the idea of entertainment into a weapon, asking what people will tolerate when the line between showbiz and survival is erased.

When it was first released, The Running Man wasn’t as big a hit as Commando or Predator. Critics had mixed reviews, and some dismissed it as another disposable action flick. People didn’t understand how ahead of its time this film was. But over the years, its reputation has grown. Viewers started to see it as more than just pulp. They saw how eerily it predicted the rise of reality TV and the hunger for shock-driven entertainment.

That’s probably why it works so well on Netflix today. Modern audiences can watch The Running Man and see both a wild 1980s action romp and a warning that feels oddly recent.

Arnold has plenty of classics in his catalogue, but The Running Man is one of those titles that proves why his films endure. They weren’t just about action, but they also showed fears and fantasies of their time. Now, nearly 40 years later, this dystopian spectacle is back in the conversation.